The Real Revolution in Online Education Isn’t MOOCsHarvard Business Review

Something is clearly wrong when only 11% of business leaders — compared to 96% of chief academic officers — believe that graduates have the requisite skills for the workforce. Data is confirming what we already know: degrees don’t communicate much about a candidate’s potential and fit.

There is a new wave of online competency-based learning providers that has absolutely nothing to do with offering free, massive, or open courses. In fact, they’re not even building courses per se, but creating a whole new architecture of learning that has serious implications for businesses and organizations around the world.

It’s called online competency-based education, and it’s going to revolutionize the workforce because it has the potential to provide learning experiences that drive down costs, accelerate degree completion, and produce a variety of convenient, customizable, and targeted programs for the emergent needs of our labor market.

In recent years, a succession of new educational models have been held up as the future of higher education. The next-generation university, we are told, will be built around flipped classrooms. Or competency-based education.

But instead of embracing a single solution, institutions might consider implementing differentiated paths to a degree. Personalization is the watchword of the contemporary consumer economy, and this principle might be applied to education as well.

The University of Texas System is poised to launch a bold experiment with career-aligned, competency-based, personalized adaptive programs where students will receive two transcripts: A traditional transcript and a competency-based transcript that identifies the skills and knowledge students have mastered and the ways that these are linked to clearly defined proficiencies.

University of Manchester’s Graphene City is Waiting for Take-OffThe Times Higher Education

The University of Manchester has successfully trademarked the term “Graphene City” in its bid for the North West to win the global race to commercialise the wonder material.

Luke Georghiou, Manchester’s vice-president for research and innovation, said that the institution had protected the name as part of a plan to build a “thriving knowledge-based economy” in the city around the substance.

The university currently has about 100 researchers and 100 postgraduate students working in the development of graphene.

Why Wearables Are the New Gateways to Human KnowledgeCampus Technology

Ray Kurzweil, American author, scientist, inventor and futurist said, famously: "Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge." It turns out that gateway is widening, especially on campus, where wearable technology is becoming the latest portal into human knowledge — and the future.

Portable devices can transform how we communicate, learn and work together, that's why some colleges are starting to open experiments with wearable technologies such as Google Glass, the Narrative Clip and Oculus Rift.

Wearables have the potential to have a huge impact on the teaching-learning environment. The best way for IT departments and faculty to be ahead of the curve is to start the conversation now, embrace change and always be open to innovation.

A New Department Marks the Rise of a Discipline: ‘Computational Media’The Chronicle of Higher Education

Pixar movies, interactive video games, smartphone applications—all are forms of computational media, the marriage of computer science to the arts and humanities. Signaling a deeper investment in that fast-growing if slippery field, the University of California at Santa Cruz announced the creation of what it called the first computational-media department ever.

Other universities are exploring the intersection of computing and the liberal arts. Georgia Tech offers a bachelor’s degree in computational media and the University of Calgary has a graduate program in computational-media design.

“It’s about reconnecting computation to culture and creativity in a way that makes us ask the questions we don’t ask about the role of computers in our lives.”

'Grit' Might be More Important than IQ. Now Schools Need to Learn to Teach itVox

Being smart in school isn't enough. The focus has turned to whether students have grit — whether they can keep going in the face of setbacks to achieve long-term goals.

Grit has little to do with traditional intelligence. But it's highly important. College admissions officers have said if they could measure grit in applicants and use it as a selection criterion, they would.

There's just one problem: if grit can be taught, we don't know how to do it yet. Researchers have learned that self-control can be taught and cultivated. The idea of growing grit, on the other hand, is in its infancy.

How Students Lead the Learning Experience at Democratic SchoolsMindShift

The Fairhaven School, which opened its doors in 1998, has no tests or grades, and no assigned homework. Its goal is to help students develop two core traits: agency and autonomy. The only entrance requirement is a trial week to ensure prospective students are interacting positively with others and not endangering anyone, including themselves.

The roughly 60 students range in age from five to 18 and all of the children, regardless of their ages, “know what they want to do, and learning is a by-product of what they do,”says Mark McCaig. “Learning is the result of doing, not vice versa.”

The most significant responsibility at the school is that “you are responsible for what you make of your life,” McCaig says. To graduate, students write and defend a thesis that they have “prepared themselves to become effective adults in the larger community.”

The MIT has announced a new initiative to teach video game design and online education free of charge. The university is kicking off the first series of MOOCs this week, focusing on educational technology. Next will come game design starting on Oct. 22, and, in the near future, there will be courses on educational gaming and technology.

The first video game was invented at MIT about 50 years ago, so it’s only logical that MIT’s game development MOOC wants to teach students how to create their own game, create a formal proposal, and start a crowd funding campaign.

The teacher education program at MIT focuses on games and other tools, with one game, Lure of the Labyrinth, having a cult following among middle school math teachers.

To Siri, With Love
How One Boy With Autism Became B.F.F.'s With Apple’s SiriThe New York Times

Gus has autism, and Siri, Apple’s “intelligent personal assistant” on the iPhone, is currently his B.F.F.

For most of us, Siri is merely a momentary diversion. But for some, it’s more. The developers of intelligent assistants recognize their uses to those with speech and communication problems — and some are thinking of new ways the assistants can help.

In a world where the commonly held wisdom is that technology isolates us, it’s worth considering another side of the story.